"If you never read this wonderful fantasist, buy this book.
You'll stay up all night and thank me in the morning."
           Stephen King

"I thank the gods that he's chosen the best art I think we have-the novel-to make his vision large."
The Washington Post

Jonathan Carroll lives in Vienna. He has been a cult writer for a long time. It has been twenty years since his first book "The Land of Laughs" was published, which was later translated to several languages. He has just finished the manuscript for the book "The White Apples" and has just published "The Wooden Sea." The novel opens with a one eyed pit bull dying in an office, and the man who buries the dog, laters finds the corpse in the trunk of the car. From there his novel takes a surrealist journey that seems to travel across dimensions and worlds. His writing is nóir and original. He is becoming the hottest writer to publish books that defy any type of categorization. His books are a breath of fresh air in a market that has become standardized.

He has written novellas and short fiction for several publications, Cosmopolitan and Playboy, among others. Jonathan Carrol talked to us about his last book "The Wooden Sea", writing and life.

Interview by Mauricio Saravia

ARTIST INTERVIEWS: "The Wooden Sea" is very powerful and so controversial. Can you tell us about the feelings and mood that inspired the book?

Jonathan Carroll: I think when you round the corner to middle age you start asking yourself (and the world) certain questions that until this time, either didn't enter your head or weren't pertinent to your life. Because my life has been so full of changes, around fifty I started thinking about things like what would my earlier self have thought about where I ended up? Where will I die and under what circumstances? In the end, what is it that really matters above all other things? When you write, one of the nice things about it is it allows you to address some of the questions that need answering in your life.

AI: Do you think your work blends fantasy and surrealism?

JC: Over the years my work has been described as Fantasy, horror, SciFi, mainstream, slipstream, Rap, House and Cha Cha Cha. In the end who cares what it is so long as it is worth reading. Categories often, sadly, keep people from experiencing things that would enrich their lives. Some of the most interesting writers around today are writing "genre" work. The "mystery" writers Thomas H. Cook, Daniel Woodrell, Dennis Lehane. The "fantasy" writers Philip Pullman, M. John Harrison, Neil Gaiman and China Mieville. Wonderful stylists and storytellers, but many people will not read them because they write "those" kind of books. Pablo Neruda once said that not reading Julio Cortazar was akin to never having tasted an orange. The same thing applies here to those who never read these writers because they are working in genre. Screw what section they are on in the bookstore-- read them and decide for yourself.

AI: What are you working on now, Jonathan?

JC: Nothing. I am in a full brain coma after last week staggering across the finish line with the finished manuscript of my new novel WHITE APPLES grasped between my teeth. Now it is in my agent's hands and it is time for me to sit in a Viennese cafe for hours and look out the window.

"Over the years my work has been described as Fantasy, horror, SciFi, mainstream, slipstream, Rap, House and Cha Cha Cha. In the end who cares what it is so long as it is worth reading."

AI: Your life has been very intense! So many experiences, so much traveling. Do you have any anecdotes that you would like to tell us from your life as a writer?

JC: Who I am and what I have done in my life has little to do with what I write. All that matters is whether or not my books are any good. I am always deeply skeptical of writers who put on their author's bio that they washed dishes on a Spanish galleon, worked in a diamond mine in Zimbabwe, played point guard for the Chicago Bulls, taught the Sultan of Brunei how to play croquet and only then decided to write. That's just to make themselves sound interesting, but if their books aren't, I couldn't care less if they flew a B-1 bomber out of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.They might have been a good airplane pilot but their books are lousy and that's what I paid them for, not their piloting skills.

AI: You have published so many books, have written articles for magazines, you have been recommended by Stephen King, and you have achieved great literary success. Has achieving literary and personal success changed your perception of life?

JC: Not at all. When I turned in the manu of my new novel last week I immediately began biting my fingernails mentally, hoping that both my editor and agent would like what I wrote. That is no different from twenty years ago when I did the same thing in the same mind-set with my first (published) novel THE LAND OF LAUGHS. Maybe that's good though-- paranoia keeps an edgeon what you're doing. Complacency does not.

AI: What's a day in the life of Jonathan Carroll?

JC: Wake up at five or five-thirty because I like to watch the sun come up. Walk Jack, my baby bullterrier. Go to a nearby cafe and drink two very strong cups of coffee which gets the juices flowing. Walk back home thinking about what I want to write that day. Because I like to write I usually do. But if my mind feels like playing hooky for a day or more I always let it. It hasalways been my friend and never let me down as far as ultimately going back to the desk and getting the work done. Some days of the week I teach school, so if that's scheduled I pack things up and become a school teacher for a little while. Although I no longer need to do it, teaching is the best way to get out of my writing head and back into the real world. But eventually you always come home and go back to work.

AI: What are your plans for this year?

JC: Spend some time in Greece this spring, some time in Tuscany this summer with a friend, and then to the US in October for the World Fantasy Convention in Minneapolis and then most likely, an extended book tour in the U.S.

Thank you Jonathan!

You can visit Jonathan Carroll's web site at: www.jonathancarroll.com